In a process for producing a hard butter product such as chocolate, tempering is an important process to facilitate release of a solidified product from a mold and to obtain a product having good properties such as excellent luster, gloss, mouthfeel or the like.
However, in general, tempering operation of chocolate is troublesome and there is a tendency to omit tempering operation. For this purpose, it has been used a hard butter having a high elaidin content, or a hard butter wherein the fatty acid arrangement is randomized by interesterification or the like. However, miscibility of these hard butters with cacao butter is limited and, thereby, taste and flavor of the resulting product are also limited.
Further, regarding a method for tempering, there are optimum conditions for each production depending upon a particular kind of a hard butter used, composition and oil content as well as the presence of milk solids, but it is not always easy to find out the suitable conditions.
Thus, there have been employed various methods for tempering. However, in general, tempering usually involves at least one step for force-cooling a molten oily composition and at least one step for reheating it (for example, "Seika Jiten", page 459, October, 1981 published by Asakura Shoten).
Such tempering of chocolate is aimed at formation and increase in .beta.-crystals. In contrast to this, .beta.'-crystals is generally preferred as those of shortening (for example, "Yushi Yogo Jiten", edited by Nihon Yukagaku Kyokai, published in October 1987), and the content of .beta.-crystals generally is low. Although liquid shortening wherein .beta.-crystals predominantly exist is also known (U.S. Pat No. 3,360,376), its hard stock generally contains tri-saturated triglycerides as a main ingredient. Therefore, it is used for baking or the like and has no relation with chocolate production.
In the case of other hard butter products which contain a considerable amount of a fat or oil ingredient having a low melting point in addition to hard butter, it is difficult to effect tempering, which results in lowering of gloss and blooming of a hard butter ingredient during storage.
The present inventors have developed shortening which is suitable for a hard butter product such as chocolate. This is unexpected from the viewpoint of conventional usages of shortening. It has been found that, by using this shortening, tempering operation in the production of a hard butter product can be eliminated or simplified or can be carried out by a standardized step. In addition, it has been also found that this shortening is a cheap source of crystals which can become cores for growth of stable crystals in a hard butter product and has good dispersibility.